Duke Nukem : Manhattan Project

Say Hello To My Little Friend

Duke Nukem gets into Max Payne territory

Before Duke Nukem went 3D, he was the star of a pair of fairly
amusing shareware platform games. Now the Manhattan Project is
taking him back to those roots, with an all-new side-scrolling
action game that sports a mixture of retro gameplay and snappy 3D
graphics.

As with most Duke Nukem games, the plot is fairly inconsequential.
A villain called Morphix is saturating New York with a radioactive
slime which is turning Manhattan's vermin (human and otherwise)
into hideous gun toting mutants. With the city's police force
rapidly turning into pig cops, it's now up to the Duke to track
down Morphix and put an end to his dastardly plan. In your way
stand hundreds of mutants scattered across eight action-packed
episodes. There are platforms to hop across, ladders to climb,
buttons to push, babes to rescue and colour coded keycards to
recover. To quote the Duke, "someone's gonna pay for making me find
these frigging keycards".

The level design is generally very good, with detailed locations
packed full of secret areas to uncover, desperate leaps to pull off
and power-ups to collect. Settings range from the rooftops of
Manhattan down into the sewers and subway system, and although the
game lacks the interactivity of Duke Nukem 3D, there are plenty of
surreal moments along the way, such as a nightclub full of babes
and mutants boogying on the dancefloor, strobes flashing as Duke
leaps between the lighting rigs hanging from the ceiling. The
humour doesn't all hit the spot, but little touches like the way
Duke's health depends on inflating his ego by killing mutants and
rescuing babes make it all worthwhile.

Do I Look Like A Frog?

Now if only I could see what I was shooting...

It's not all good news though. The spike traps that are found
throughout Morphix's underground factory are particularly annoying,
instantly reducing you to a shower of gibs, often without seeming
to touch you at all. Then there's the Frogger inspired section in
China Town, which has you fighting your way down a dual
carriageway, blowing up cars or switching between the two lanes to
avoid oncoming traffic. I guess Duke never heard of using the
pavement. Sorry, sidewalk.

What makes this section even more annoying is the fact that you
can't see the traffic until it's right on top of you, a flaw which
afflicts the entire game. A lot of the time the developers have set
the camera too close in, nicely highlighting your character in the
middle of the screen, but leaving you with virtually no peripheral
vision. You can pan the camera around to a limited extent to see
what's waiting for you, but only while you're stationary. Other
than that your only option is to zoom in even closer, which is
completely useless unless you want to admire Duke Nukem's jawline.

At times the game can seem almost sadistic. The fully 3D engine
means that Duke can walk in and out of the set at certain specific
points (marked by a flashing green arrow), and occasionally the
camera will curve around in a loop to track him as he edges his way
around a building or changes direction. Most of the time you're
locked onto a fixed side-to-side track though, and you're left
wondering why the game is forcing you to hop across a dozen narrow
girders under enemy fire to get back to the other end of the one
you started off on, when there's nothing obvious which would have
stopped you from just walking along it and saving yourself a lot of
time and effort. The controls are also a bit too basic,
harking back to the original shareware games and ignoring the
innovations of more recent side-scrollers like Abuse. As such the
mouse is only used for its extra buttons, and there's no way to aim
your gun except to point it straight up, which makes picking off
enemies standing on platforms a lot harder than it really should
be.

Conclusion

The Manhattan Project is an entertaining if somewhat shallow and
overly simplified action game. At times it can prove frustrating,
while other sections (including many of the end-of-episode boss
encounters) are really too easy. What really spoils the experience
though is the poor camera placement, which shows off the 3D
graphics to great effect but isn't always particularly playable. At
a near budget price it's worth a look if you want some retro
side-scrolling action with the benefits of modern technology, but
ultimately it falls short of its potential.

6
/
10

Read the Eurogamer.net reviews policyDuke Nukem : Manhattan ProjectGestaltReview - Duke goes back to his side-scrolling days, but is this a nostalgia trip worth taking?2002-07-14T11:52:00+01:00610